The BEST Decision We Made For Our Wedding Day

Our wedding day was an absolute blast, you guys.

We truly loved everything about it. And if we could go back, we honestly truly from the bottoms of our hearts would not change a thing!

So let’s look at it from another angle, shall we? Let’s take a look at what we consider to be the best decision we made for our wedding day! Are you ready? Drumroll please! We believe the best decision we made was to do a first look.

That’s right! We didn’t say it was going with the most expensive venue. We didn’t say our best decision was to get married on Friday instead of Saturday. We really, truly believe that the best choice we made was to do a first look. (if you don’t know what a first look is, see here!)

*Disclaimer: If you are planning your wedding and you are going the traditional route, this is not, we repeat NOT to say that you are doing anything wrong! We live in the South where tradition runs deeeep. We understand! We just want to explain why we feel this was the best decision for US! Don’t fret!

We want to share this with you guys because this can be a very stressful time in your life! You are just beginning the wedding planning process and this is a big decision. We want to share with you guys why we chose to do a first look and why our eyes light up when we talk to our couples about the possibility of doing one as well!

So here are our 3 top reasons that we feel doing a first look was the best decision we made for our wedding!

We Enjoyed More Of Our Day Together

One of the most amazing byproducts of sharing a first look was that we got to enjoy more time together on our wedding day! At first glance that might seem like a small benefit. But think about it for a second. Let’s assume your ceremony starts at 5:30PM. If you go the traditional route, you don’t see each other until then! It’s amazing to think about how much happens before that moment. Because we did a first look and shared that moment together earlier in the day, we got to spend 3 or 4 more hours together than we would have if we had chosen to go the traditional path!

Because we weren’t trying to avoid seeing each other before the ceremony, we were able to get our creative portraits, wedding party and family pictures done before the ceremony! Had we gone the traditional route, we would have had to squeeze most of those in between the ceremony and reception. Doing them in advance, we enjoyed a low-stress day and went straight from our ceremony right into our reception!

We Had A Private Moment Together

There is something dramatic about the bride walking down the aisle as the stately music plays. Everyone stands. The groom holds back the tears. We can’t deny the gravity of that moment! But for our day, we were imagining a different dream moment. Everything is quiet except the birds chirping and the rushing of the nearby falls. It was just us. Ryan turned around to see Alyssa’s face. She was already in tears. You see, we wanted our moment to be between us. We wanted to be able to talk and take in the gravity of the day together. Sharing that moment with 200 people watching and not being able to talk the first time we saw each other just wasn’t our idea of a dream moment.

We can’t deny the magic of seeing her walk in or seeing him waiting for you at the end of the aisle, but our moment was private and we loved that! It was a memory for us to share alone on our special day!

We Didn’t Miss Out On Anything

When talking through timelines with our couples, we find that the perceived downside to the first look is that they are missing out on something. They are missing out on that moment where she walks down the aisle to her waiting, emotional groom. We can only speak from our own personal experience in saying, “We didn’t miss out on anything!” In fact, Ryan strongly believes he got an added bonus of seeing Alyssa not once but twice! We got that special first look between the two of us where we got to discuss the day and take everything in, but we also got the magical “walk-down-the-aisle-to-your-groom” moment. We got the best of both worlds and we wouldn’t have it any other way!

As you can see, we are a little biased towards the first look! But, like we said earlier, there is nothing wrong with going the traditional route! A lot can depend on the schedule of your day and how you want things to go. But we wouldn’t change a single thing about our wedding day and we truly believe that our first look was the best decision we made!

As an added bonus, here are a few images of our first look! We were just kids!!!

If you want to see tips for planning your wedding, we have written a whole series on planning out your wedding timeline including the major decision of “first look or traditional!” See it here!